Our heads are stuffed full of words and yet somehow our brains manage to make sensible use of them. It's a curious situation that the poet T.S. Eliot describes as "the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings." Amazingly, up until fairly recently, we only had very rough ideas as to how our brains process language. However, developments in neuroscience investigations mean that researchers are starting to gain a much more legible picture of what happens in our heads when we speak, listen or read. Recent results have been very significant, and researchers are currently using the fascinating technique of "brain imaging" to investigate various aspects of how our brains handle language, including how we deal with our own language and foreign languages, and how dyslexics handle words.